


See Something You Like

by Smittywing (Smitty)



Series: Though the Stars Walk Backward [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017), Justice League - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne Has Issues, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Pool Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 06:46:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15309726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smitty/pseuds/Smittywing
Summary: “See something you like?” Bruce’s voice curls at the edge of Clark’s thoughts and he flushes, knows he’s been caught staring. Bruce’s mouth looks tight and his words are sardonic and Clark’s not entirely sure why.





	See Something You Like

**Author's Note:**

> All my thanks to Reccea, who makes these not suck, to Wojelah, who fixes the parts that almost (but not quite) work, and the Super!Squad, who cheer me on when I do dishes instead of writing.
> 
> This not the sequel you expected. That one's still en route. But I had this other piece that turned into a decent morning after. Characters are still based on the DCEU continuity. Series title, since I needed one, by e.e. cummings. 
> 
> "Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward."

Clark had been surprised when Bruce drew him into the bed to spend the night. He had been surprised when, after Round 2, Bruce had slung a heavy arm across his chest and directed him to go to sleep.

Clark is not surprised when he wakes up alone the next morning. It was what he had expected all along. People are difficult for Bruce. _He_  is difficult for Bruce. He can be patient.

Like the rest of the League, he has civilian clothes in the Cave and a superspeed dash brings them back to the bedroom. He's not sure why he returns to the scene of the crime, when he could dress and be gone in seconds, but he does, sitting in the wrecked, heady sheets as he pulls on his socks and shoes. He pulls the heavy down comforter up over the whole mess and is fixing his collar in the mirror when he hears a tap at the door.

Alfred enters with a tray of coffee and condiments.

"Good morning, Master Clark," he says briskly. "Coffee this morning?

"No, thanks, Alfred," Clark says, feeling caught-out, like he was the one who left Bruce alone. Then again, that probably says something else, says that he expected Bruce to be here, that he expected something he didn't really have a right to demand. "I should probably be on my way."

"Well," Alfred says crisply. "If you'd like to leave your regards with Master Wayne, he's doing his daily laps in the pool enclosure. I trust you're able to locate it?"

"I - " And if Clark had felt badly before, this was ten times worse. He hadn't sought out Bruce's heartbeat, his breathing, feeling like maybe he'd invaded enough the night before, and that Bruce needed his space. He knows Bruce isn't in the Cave and isn't in the dining area, and it hadn’t occurred to him to look elsewhere. "I didn't realize he was still here," he says lamely.

"No reason you should have," Alfred says, except there's every reason, everything Clark is should have told him Bruce was still on the premises. "He's fairly shit at communication. You'd do well to tread carefully."

"Um. Thanks?" Clark ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck, a nervous tic he'd acquired in high school when he'd started shooting up like a beanpole.

"You are, of course, welcome," Alfred says and whisks away the tray. With the coffee on it. Damn.

Clark opens up his senses and identifies the pool area - and Bruce - by the splash of a powerful crawl, the acrid aroma of chlorine, and the solid, steady thump of Bruce's heart.  It's two levels down, below ground level on the non-lake side, but the glass walls let in the sun from the back of the house as he enters.

The light reflects on the water and the body of the man cutting through the water, swiftly, efficiently, and far more quietly than most humans could achieve.  His hair is dark, soaked through, and his eyes are wide and bright when he lifts his head from the water.

Clark’s staring and he doesn’t know what to say so he goes with, “Um. Hi.”

“Good morning.” Bruce rakes back the wet hair falling across his forehead and wipes water away from his mouth with his palm. “Sorry, I - hold on.”

Clark can hear him perfectly well, but his eyes drop to Bruce’s shoulders, the muscles of his chest and arms, and the lapping of the water over markings, pale slashes of skin, scars prolix on his unusually visible body. The room does not actually become warmer, but Clark feels his own temperature rise by several degrees because hot and bothered is an actual, literal, Kryptonian problem. 

“Sleep all right?” Bruce asks as he swims forward to set his hands on the side of the pool.  
  
Clark steps back and okay wow, this is about to be even more awkward, he just knows it.  
  
Bruce pushes himself up, bringing one foot to the wall and rocking forward until he’s standing, dripping, at the side of the pool.  
  
“Yeah,” Clark says, and he can’t help it, he can’t help but stare at Bruce’s body. “Well enough.”  
  
Bruce is just miles - six-foot-four - of hard ropey muscles that comes from constant, daily training, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, - maybe not tears but definitely blood. His shoulders, his torso, his legs, everywhere Clark can see without his x-ray vision, it’s all on display and it’s all marked with the vicious mementos of his vocation.  
  
The only skin not visible is hidden by his swim trunks. They’re black, because it seems everything Bruce wears is black, and they wrap around his hips and upper thighs in a snug rectangle, not competitive-swimmer tight, but leaving little to Clark’s eager imagination to fill in.

“Sorry about leaving you alone,” Bruce says, walking over to the small shower at the side of the pool. “I’m not a good sleeper. I thought maybe you’d - anyway.” He turns to face the faucet and Clark uses his superspeed to catalogue every visible scar.  
  
Cuts. Burns. Bullet holes. A patch where the skin was scraped off and never grew back quite evenly. He saw Bruce naked the night before, but he feels like he’s never seen quite so much of Bruce at one time. Bruce is usually covered by one suit or another, never much beyond his face and his arms to the elbows and last night - the Cave had been shadowed, the bedroom more so. Clark doesn’t necessarily need light, but the sun is showing him everything he missed.  
  
He’s never actually looked at Bruce’s elbows. One of them had been dislocated once, long, long ago.  
  
The left shoulder has been dislocated recently but it wasn’t the first time and the right one has old scar tissue too. There are hairline fractures, sealed over and not, in Bruce’s collarbone and ribs, and in his feet, his shins, his thighs.  
  
Bruce pulls the lever on the shower, almost in slow motion, and fresh water drenches him from the spigot.  He closes his eyes and Clark looks at his skull and sees the contusions, a fracture, Bruce would have been knocked out by that, had Alfred gotten him to safety, one of the Robins? Had there been others?

“See something you like?” Bruce’s voice curls at the edge of Clark’s thoughts and he flushes, knows he’s been caught staring. Bruce’s mouth looks tight and his words are sardonic and Clark’s not entirely sure why. Did he sense the super speed? Is Clark...not supposed to look? Bruce has finished rinsing off and has a white towel slung across his shoulders.

“I - I’m sorry,” Clark says, because there’s little point denying that he can’t take his eyes off of Bruce. “Apparently I’m a moron.”  
  
Bruce quirks an eyebrow.  
  
“I just - I never thought about what twenty years of fighting crime does to a human body,” he rushes out, before he can lose his nerve.  
  
Bruce’s knuckles whiten where he grips the towel. The worst of them, the sprawling mess of scars at his left shoulder, an exit wound, long since faded white, are hidden behind that towel. Maybe Bruce was hoping Clark wouldn’t see.  
  
“Yeah,” Bruce finally says, with a lightness Clark knows from his public persona, which is so incredibly obviously fake. “It’s a bit of a mess.” He shrugs those shoulders, built from grapple lines and punching things that hurt and lifting steel beams off other humans.  
  
“No, it’s beautiful. They’re beautiful,” Clark blurts out because they are. They are seventy-eight reasons for Bruce to not put on the suit, to not go out and patrol Gotham, to not take on literal monsters from other dimensions without superpowers.  
  
“I’d hardly - ” Bruce starts.  
  
“I would.” He uses the Superman voice unintentionally, the one that’s supposed to make people do what he says.  
  
Bruce takes in a long, slow breath through his nose. “Thank you seems like the wrong thing to say,” he says, his eyes on the towel, right where the exit wound is. The entry wound is compact and round, in his back, between his shoulder blades.  “But thank you.”

“It’s.” Clark tries to order his thoughts. “Your life could be easy. You could give yourself a break any time. You could stop any time. But you don’t. You keep going and you keep building. I mean. The League is your succession plan, isn’t it? It’s not enough to keep Gotham safe, you want to make the whole world safe, so that when you’re gone, Gotham is safe, too.”  
  
“You got me,” Bruce says lightly.  
  
“You’ve got me, too,” Clark says and it’s nowhere near as light as he’d intended it to be. He was going for light but sincere, but instead it had come out as a declaration.  
  
Bruce’s eyes flick over Clark’s face and it makes Clark want to be bold, to take on Bruce in his low-slung shorts, his broad, scarred shoulders, his firm mouth. 

So he does.

The radiating scar on Bruce’s shoulder burns Clark’s palm as he pushes it under the towel and he wonders what it’s like to have testimony of your survival etched into your skin. He turns his head and licks the water from Bruce’s neck, tracing the raised skin. He thinks he can taste the bullet that punched through Bruce’s body, lead and titanium, and blood.  
  
Bruce’s fingers wind into his hair and pull his head back, throat and eyes bared to Bruce’s gaze. Bruce studies him for a moment, then taps Clark’s shoulder, a request, not an order, but Clark goes to his knees like a man compelled. Bruce’s breathing doesn’t change but a brief acceleration in his heartbeat tells Clark everything.  
  
Clark wraps his palms around Bruce’s calves, feeling the prickle of hair against his skin. The scars there are minimal, mostly old cuts and scratches, some bullet grazes. Bruce’s boots do a good job. But above them - a surgical scar on the side of his knee - laparoscopic or maybe just draining fluid. Clark’s not much of an expert on scars, not having any himself, but he’s suddenly aching to know the story behind each of them.  
  
“Clark,” Bruce protests as Clark presses his mouth to a particularly nasty stab scar on his lower thigh but doesn’t pull at his hair so Clark continues to explore, letting his hands skim upward, mapping minor injuries, long since disregarded by their bearer. The long thin line that wraps upward to his inner thigh - that’s from Selina’s whip, Clark realizes with a surge of - something he’s hesitant to name, and he wonders if it came from a fight or play. He runs the tip of his tongue up and around - and this time there is a sharply indrawn breath and Bruce does tighten his grip.  
  
Clark pulls back and tilts his head up. Bruce is looking down at him and his eyes are dark, shadowed, and for a moment Clark thinks Bruce is angry with him, but his other senses tell him differently. Bruce’s heartbeat is elevated, his breathing accelerated, and his arousal is clear in his scent and in the tight, so tight, swim trunks. Clark has never realized how many signs anger and arousal have in common until just now.  
  
“Hey,” he says. “I’m getting there.” And he pushes his hands up inside Bruce’s trunks and tilts his face to nuzzle the hard disruption of Bruce’s cock under the fabric. Bruce’s body is warm, even through the cold water lingering on the suit and beading on his skin. Clark can smell it, taste it in the back of his throat, and feel it in the skin under his fingers.  
  
“You don’t…” Bruce says as Clark draws the trunks over his erection and bares the rest of his skin to the air. “...have to.”  
  
Clark lifts his head again because it’s funny - of course he doesn’t have to. He’s Superman. There are very few things he has to do.  “Is it okay if I want to?” he asks, and Bruce actually closes his eyes. Clark keeps his hands still. He knows it’s okay. Bruce’s body just told him even if Bruce himself did not, but then Bruce’s hand releases his hair and his hand draws down over Clark’s cheek.  
  
“Yes,” he rasps, rubbing a thumb across Clark’s lower lip and Clark lifts up a little and presses a kiss to Bruce’s hip. Bruce makes a sound, a soft ‘oof’ like he’s been punched in the stomach.  
  
Clark has not ever actually sucked a cock before. But he has one and he’s pretty good at getting himself off, so he doesn’t see any reason he would have a problem getting Bruce off. He doesn’t tear the swim trunks away from Bruce’s legs because that would probably be a little extra, even for Bruce. So Clark runs his hands up to Bruce’s hips, traces his thumbs into the deep cut lines, and licks his cock right up from base to head.  
  
Bruce shudders, exhales almost silently, and pre-come spills onto the tip of Clark’s tongue. Smell evokes taste, and Clark is paying such close attention to the smell of Bruce’s body, of his arousal, that the taste nearly overwhelms him, rich and musky and male. Clark is hard, has been, he realizes, since Bruce came out of the water, but there’s a moment where he thinks he might actually come in his pants and he dials back the level of intensity he’s been operating on for the last several minutes. He mouths over the head of Bruce’s cock lightly, then with more pressure, as Bruce’s hips flex under his hands. He cheats and uses his hand to position Bruce’s cock so he can suck it in, lower his mouth down the length. He tries to keep his eyes open so he can see everything, the deep flush of Bruce’s skin, the tense muscles of his abdomen, the light curls of hair so different from his own. 

Clark lets himself experiment, tilts Bruce’s cock against his soft palate, slips it deeper into his throat. He draws back and licks the head, presses his lips to the hot, silky skin, so different from every other part of Bruce’s body that he’s touched. He closes his eyes and draws Bruce back into his mouth, back in deep, and then slides back halfway, sucking lightly. Bruce’s groan is rough and it makes Clark harder, makes him sink back down and up again, moving with the thump of the blood in his veins.

Bruce's fingers twist hard in Clark's hair, and tug his head back. He's restrained, pulsing his hips up languidly in the rhythm Clark has set, but never thrusting. Clark wouldn't mind. His gag reflex is learned, not natural. Bruce is big and Clark likes the feeling of trying to keep up with him.

"Didn't even realize how much you like this, did you, son?" Bruce grinds out softly, almost fondly, and Clark is busy being really pissed off how much his dick likes Bruce calling him ‘son’ when he realizes suddenly that he _does_  like this, he likes it a lot, and he likes doing it with Bruce.

Clark was taught not to speak with his mouth full (so full, God) so he just casts his gaze up at Bruce, who stares back, dark and hungry.

"I'm too tender for you to have another go," Bruce says with a hint of regret. "But if you like it that way too, I'm happy to oblige."

Clark's brain shorts out. The world narrows to two truths.

1) Bruce is too tender. Did Clark hurt him? Clark doesn't think so but they did go twice and he wasn't exactly gentle. And Bruce wasn't exactly...used to it. He's standing by the edge of the pool and he doesn't seem to be in pain, but Clark wants to see him squirm, wants to see whether he holds himself differently when he walks. Bruce's hole must be reddened and swollen, so sensitive and soft. He can’t stop to look but maybe Bruce will let him touch. He can be gentle.

2) Bruce wants to fuck Clark. He wants to put that cock, that big, full, slick cock, in Clark's ass and fuck him. Wants to stretch him open and -

Clark gasps, shuddering. He doesn't come, but just barely. He pulls off and drops back on his heels, trying to hold on to his control.

Bruce’s hand loosens in his hair as he sits back, fingertips trailing down his face to his mouth. Bruce thumbs over his mouth and Bruce asks, “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” Clark says, mouth suddenly dry. “That is a hell yes.”

“Take your clothes off,” Bruce orders.

Clark is trying to undo all the buttons on his shirt at once when he hears a quiet splash and looks up to see Bruce is back in the water.

“Are you - should I?” he asks, muffled through the fabric of his shirt as he yanks it over his head, still half-buttoned. He pushes his shoes off behind him and rolls to his feet.  It’s probably not as majestic as Superman should be but there’s a thrumming in Clark’s blood that he hasn’t felt since his teenage years.

Bruce’s hand in his hair.

Bruce’s cock in his mouth.

Bruce’s dirty worlds curling through his thoughts.

Bruce is going to fuck him.

Bruce is still here.

Clark opens his pants, invigorated by purpose. Invulnerable or not, he’s careful to peel everything away from his cock before shoving his khakis and boxers down his hips.

The open appreciation in Bruce’s eyes makes him feel vain, makes him fist his cock at the base as he steps out of his clothes.

Bruce smirks and rolls back on his shoulders, floating. His own cock bobs out of the water and Clark can’t take his eyes off it.

“Water’s warm,” Bruce offers and Clark jumps in with at least 600% more splashing than entirely necessary.

Bruce shakes his head, blinking water out of his eyes and Clark takes advantage of his momentary distraction to kiss his open mouth. Bruce scissors his legs around Clark’s waist, slotting their hips together. He locks one arm across Clark’s shoulders, buries the other in his hair. He does it all without opening his eyes.

Bruce is a fucking show-off.

“Hi,” Clark says, grinning as Bruce makes a show of wiping water off his face.  

“Hi,” Bruce says back and then his legs tighten and the world tilts and Clark is underwater. He laughs - underwater has never been a problem for him, but he has to give Bruce props for swift and effective payback.

The bubbles from his laughter float to his right so he pushes his head in that direction, surfacing to Bruce’s smirk.

Clark reaches for his hips and pulls Bruce to him, nipping that smirk off his mouth. Or trying to. It’s a persistent smirk. Bruce’s mouth hasn’t been this soft before, Clark thinks, nudging it open and kissing Bruce more deeply. He fucks his cock up against Bruce’s hip and cups Bruce’s ass in his hands.

Bruce twitches and Clark remembers _I’m too tender_  and edges his fingers carefully up to brush gently, as gently as he’d ever learned, down behind Bruce’s balls.

“I’m fine, Boy Scout,” Bruce growls against his mouth and bites down on his lower lip.

Clark lets it go, but doesn’t let Bruce go because his grip gives him good leverage to rock back and forth in the hollow of Bruce’s thigh and hip.

Then Bruce drops one hand to Clark’s ass and strokes into him with firm, slick movements. Clark’s not sure how he got lube _in the pool_  but it’s he supposes the answer would be, _He’s Batman_.

Clark hasn't been penetrated before, except for that one time when Lois slipped him one finger, and then two, during a blow job. Lois was amazing at blow jobs and she'd been pleased at his reaction to her fingers, but hadn't gone further.

Bruce is interested in going a lot further.

His fingers are bigger than Lois’s, too, more confident, firmer in their exploration. Clark draws in one breath and then another and doesn’t wince when Bruce stretches him open with two fingers. It doesn’t actually hurt but the heat and the pressure make him squeeze his eyes closed and he reminds himself to be very very conscious of the pressure of his fingertips against Bruce’s skin.

“Can we - ?” he grits out, because Bruce is taking his sweet time and Clark never realized how much he wants this. “Can you - ?”

“In a hurry?” Bruce rasps next to his ear and a tremor shoots through Clark’s body. He’s never ached for anything quite this acutely. “All right,” Bruce says, apparently feeling the tremor. “All right, I have you.”

Bruce tilts Clark back in the water so he's floating on his back and pulls him onto Bruce's cock. Clark's body opens easily, pressure, a bit of discomfort, but no actual pain, of course.

There's something...intimate... about having Bruce _inside_  him that he hadn't realized from the other side. Clark arches into the water and lets Bruce fuck him wide open with measured, steady thrusts. The water laps over his face and wrists, cooling his body as his muscles tremor with the sensations Bruce is wresting from him. It's like flying.

Bruce shifts one hand from Clark's hip to the back of his neck.  Clark opens his eyes. His cock is riding the valley between Bruce's abdominal muscles and Bruce folds in tight. "Wrap your legs around me," he urges and Clark complies, tightening his grip and bringing his knees high.

Bruce pulls Clark up, and Clark goes easily, floating, letting Bruce's hand on his neck guide him. The motion shifts Clark around Bruce's cock, finding new points of pressure, sliding into even more intimate contact. Clark bites his lip and Bruce cants his hips back to float, lifting one hand to soothe the bite. Clark turns his cheek into Bruce's palm, every bit of skin-to-skin contact driving his need for more.

"See why I don't do this much?" Bruce asks hoarsely. His face is so close to Clark's and he presses soft kisses to Clark's jaw as he moves against Clark's prostate, making him shiver. "See how much control you give up?"

Bruce doesn't do this _hardly ever_  and Clark had felt special to be granted it the night before, but now he thinks he might have some idea just how vulnerable, just how exposed Bruce feels to open his fragile, human self up to someone in this intimate way. When Bruce lifts his head, Clark presses their foreheads together and then kisses Bruce's mouth. It seems important, suddenly, to make sure Bruce knows that this is important to Clark, too. That he's not going anywhere, that he knows what it took for Bruce to get here.

Clark presses forward and it shifts him against Bruce, shifts how they press together, inside, and he gasps, pleasure battering at his cells. “Bruce,” he murmurs, and he can _feel_  Bruce’s soft exhalations, how Bruce is putting all his power into the roll of his hips, of how hard he is fucking up into Clark.  “Bruce, I. I - ”

Bruce kisses him again, swallowing the words Clark desperately wants to get out, just as soon as he knows what they are. “I know,” Bruce growls softly and kisses him again.  “I know.” He’s not letting Clark speak and it’s for the best, really. He doesn’t recall ever being so overwhelmed by sex, not even when he was sixteen and so so scared that maybe with sex would come something, some power or difference, that he wouldn’t be able to hide.

Despite himself, despite their history, Clark _likes_  Bruce. He likes Bruce’s hands and his scars and his voice and his wry smile and his heart. He likes that Bruce demands maximum performance from everyone, but never asks what they can’t do. He likes when Bruce curses mid-battle, and when Bruce tries so hard to understand Barry, and when ends up being the team Mom. He likes that Bruce will do what they won’t, that he’ll make hard decisions, even when Clark isn’t such a fan of those decisions. But he’s alive, because of Bruce, and he’s pretty happy about that, all things considered.

Clark doesn’t like how much of his fate ends up in Bruce’s hands except maybe he secretly does, because he’s never felt so vulnerable, never felt this kind of safety in a ceding of control. He’s not sure he’s ever ceded this much control, not voluntarily. Bruce’s hands are sure on his skin, on his hips, directing his body, and Clark squeezes his eyes closed, letting Bruce take him over the edge, letting Bruce overwhelm him.

He was prepared for Bruce to be gone, for last night to become something they never speak of. But he’s so grateful, so joyful, that Bruce is still here, that this isn’t a one-time thing like so many of his encounters.

He lets go of Bruce when he comes, lets Bruce drive up into him and push him down and he’s shuddering, hot and blinding, tears stinging the corners of his eyes.

And then he’s floating, water lapping at his face, at his stomach, at his cock, which is still hard, but sensitive in a way it rarely gets. He’s still full, the pressure and heat of Bruce inside him and when he opens his eyes, Bruce is bent nearly double, his shoulders shuddering.

Clark reaches up and presses his palm against Bruce’s face. He’s tense, rough with morning stubble, and the pulse under his jaw is pounding. Bruce straightens and he looks almost dazed, his mouth fallen open, eyes soft. He thumbs the crease of Clark’s hip and thigh and says, “Sorry, this always hurts.”  He shifts his hips, edging out carefully. It doesn’t hurt, but the change in pressure is uncomfortable, and that vulnerability washes over Clark again. Bruce’s face is too far away now so he latches on to Bruce’s wrist.

Bruce smiles and picks up his hand, kissing Clark’s knuckles. He wipes off his stomach - Clark made a mess - with his other hand, splashing water up to sluice the stickiness away. Clark loosens his legs and stands up. He’s a mess too, and he’s washing himself off when he realizes what he’s doing.

“Oh,” he says, suddenly awkward. “The water. I mean. Do you have people - “

“The water filter’s self-cleaning,” Bruce says, reaching onto the deck of the pool to snag his towel and pull it to the edge. When he moves his broad shoulder, Clark finally spots the little bottle of lubricant lying sideways in the crack between the deck and the curved edge of the pool. Bruce turns and hauls himself up on the edge, sitting on the towel and then settling back on his elbows, feet still in the pool.  Clark pushes himself up to sit on the edge too, sit next to Bruce and look down at him and the water droplets hovering on his skin.

Clark runs his fingers the wrong way through Bruce's hair, making it stick up in dark licks and waves. "Why did you say yes?" he asks, wiping away an invisible spot on Bruce's temple.

It's the worst kind of vague and Clark expects Bruce to ask 'yes to what' or, at the very least, deprecate his journalistic bona fides, but Bruce just kicks at the water and says, "I had a feeling. That this could be good."

"You had a feeling?" Clark echos, not-so-secretly delighted by the answer. "You. Had a feeling. And listened to it. And *acted* on it."

"I have feelings," Bruce says, nonplussed. "Most of them are just inconvenient. Or annoying."

"I'm pretty sure you thought _I_ was inconvenient and annoying until - " _Until I died_ , Clark doesn't say. "Until recently."

"People keep bringing that up in hopes of hearing me say I was wrong," Bruce grumbles. "Do you want breakfast?"

"I always want breakfast," Clark says before he thinks and then, "Wait, will Alfred know that we just - ? Oh God, it's like living with my parents again. Also, you're ducking the question."

"It's one of my strengths," Bruce deadpans, pushing himself up on the ledge of the pool and then to his feet. "And Alfred pretty much knows everything, so it's best to pretend you just don't care."

"But I do care," Clark protests.

Bruce pauses, tilts his head, and Clark seizes up inside. That - wasn't what he meant. But it's not a lie.

"I know," Bruce says, and reaches out, palm up, toward Clark.

Clark hardly needs help to stand, but he lets Bruce pull anyway, offering no resistance, but no help either. His weight doesn't seem to bother Bruce and Clark feels himself flush a little as he remembers Bruce's hand tugging at his hair and Bruce's firm, deliberate words in his ear. Something about Bruce, about Bruce's strength, awes him. He thinks that if he could be weak in the knees, this is what it would feel like. It’s exhilarating the way all new feelings are.

Bruce pulls him closer, keeping his hand firmly in grasp. He lowers his head, just a touch, and nuzzles Clark’s left cheek, from apple to mandible, right where there would be a scar, if Clark scarred.

“C’mon,” Bruce whispers against his skin.

Clark goes. It doesn’t matter where. He’ll follow.

 


End file.
